images

In my presentation to folks here in Goochland last school year on the 7 Learning Hacks, I implored teachers to use pictures and videos to introduce concepts, treating them as media as part of an anticipatory set or as an advance organizer.

Dr. Robert Marzano has recently published some findings about non-linguistic representations, and these can include drawings students make themselves.

Nonlinguistic strategies require students to generate a representation of new information that does not rely on language. In the hundreds of action research projects that we have conducted with teachers throughout the years, this approach is one of the most commonly studied. Specifically, across 129 studies in which teachers used nonlinguistic strategies—such as graphic organizers, sketches, and pictographs—with one class but not with another class studying the same content, the average effect was a 17 percentile point gain in student achievement (Haystead & Marzano, 2009).

First, clip art is a pretty low-resolution type of file. In the rebus story in the link above, the images work more as icons than as real, honest to goodness pictures. Using real photographs (even ones the kids have taken or played a part in capturing) would be better.

Second, seeing the icons instead of the names (again, in the example from above), kids begin to easily see the frequency of those words in the story. If the lesson is on nouns, wow—great process. What if the lesson is on action verbs? Voila! Use images that show action.

This type of activity could be completed using a laptop and projector with Kidspiration ,as well. Better yet, kids could write these stories in concert using an interactive white board. After a few examples created together, kids could use laptops or the lab to generate their own stories.

If properly formatted, these rebus stories could be passed one grade level down, for those students to replace the pictures (or icons) with the real words.

Images play a powerful role in communication today. This idea from Jolene Barron might get you started on a new way to marry technology, images, and the creativity of writing into a worthwhile project.

Several teachers have contacted me of late about the space on their blog for pictures and media. “New pictures aren’t loading!” they write. Well, I’ve got both good and bad news.

First, it’s imperative (read: required) to re-size photos for the Web. This has always been the case. While those 5-, 6-, 7-, 8-, and 9-megapixel images look great for printing, there are far too many pixels within them for the Web.

Use iPhoto or Preview to re-size photos to web-friendly sizes. In iPhoto, use the Export function, and choose a size in pixels. The width of your photos should be in the range of 300-450 pixels, maximum.

The screenshot above is from my blog: on your WordPress dashboard, you’ll see how much free space you have. 150 MB is the equivalent to 1.5 Zip disks (for those of you who remember those), or about 1/10 of a gigabyte.

This photo, above, is 24KB. It’s size is 288×310 pixels. With 150 MB of space, you should be able to store over 5,000 photos like this in your blog space. If you are running out of space, please do check your resources, and ensure that you are only uploading media that has been optimized for the Web, in terms of size. While download times at work may be pretty quick, folks with dial-up connections really suffer when they hit a webpage with a 2- or 4-megabyte image.

About this blog…

This is the blog of John Hendron, Ed.D., director of innovation & strategy for Goochland County Public Schools. Through this blog I share information for teachers, administrators and families dealing with learning and teaching with technology.